Off the Wall Friday - Nudes Bathing

I had a chance to get the backgrounds quilted.  I am not really good at this part. As I went along I got more comfortable with the process and began to loosen up and enjoy the stitching.  I wish I had done more planning on the hills and grasses but I like the water and the nudes.

I am linking up with Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday, so when you finish here, go check out what her 200th blog post looks like!  So cool to be in this group of talented peoples.

If you want to see how I did things prior to this stage you can look here and  here and here.

I am ready to put the leaves so the backgrounds needed to be quilted first.  I sandwiched the top and back with a fusible batting Pellon 725 I think.  It is not heavy, but just the right weight to give stability and body to the piece.  Keep in mind, it is small, about 8 x 11 or so.  I think the walker may be a bit longer than the swimmer.

I used my Connecting Threads thread for all but the sky and the nudes.  I didn't have the correct color so I dug into my rayon threads and pulled a nice nude color.  My machine auto corrects for thread tension but it needs a few stitches to realize I have changed the thread sizes!  I don't normally use the rayon thread so I had to remember that, after making a couple of thread snarls.

I put the nudes on by fusing them to the quilted background.  They were
cut out using the paper template, so they already had fusible on them prior to being cut out.

Here are some close shots of the quilting on the two pieces.








Looking good! Aren't their butts too cute?  The swimmer is a bit lopsided, but hey, so am I.  I would give anything to have a butt like hers!

They needed hair so I had to search high and low in the quilt room for about an hour to find my stash of embroidery threads.  I had a wonderful reddish brown, and so the nudes became dark gingers.

I am going to play with the tulle tomorrow and then add the leaves.

I am loving them!  How about you?

Oh, one more thing.  I did a
cockatoo a few years back with a technique similar to how the back
turned out on these.  Here is an interesting project for you to think about.  Quilting from the front in this case made this on the back.  See the outline of the swimmer in the leaves?

My cockatoo is done from the back to look like this on the front!